A Widow who was fond of cleaning had two little maidens to wait on her. She was in the habit of waking them early in the morning, at cockcrow. The maidens, aggravated by such excessive labor, resolved to kill the cock who roused their mistress so early. When they had done this, they found that they had only prepared for themselves greater troubles, for their mistress, no longer hearing the hour from the cock, woke them up to their work in the middle of the night.
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Aesop was an ancient Greek storyteller, believed to have lived around 620–564 BCE, whose fables have been retold across cultures for over two thousand years. His stories typically feature animals or everyday characters caught in situations that reveal a sharp moral truth. "The Widow and Her Little Maidens" is one of his more human-centred fables, placing ordinary domestic life at the heart of its lesson.
